The 2001 Brickyard 400

Mark and the Viagra® (sildenafil citrate) racing team Mark hurt early

returned to Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the eighth annual Brickyard 400 on Sunday. Mark qualified 25th on Saturday morning, but told the team during the final practice that the car was much better in race trim than it was in qualifying trim. After a good "happy hour" practice, the team was ready to race.

Mark faced an early setback when he was caught up in an accident on only the second lap of the race. The car sustained damage to the right-front, so Mark pitted four times under caution to repair the damage. The front of the car was too high in the air and the team tried to force it down, but it created a lot of drag when Mark returned to the race in 41st place.

Another caution came out on lap 22 and Mark used the opportunity to pit three more times so the team could try to get the nose of the car down. Four crew members jumped on the front of the car to get the body closer to the ground. After working as much as they could, Mark returned to the race in 37th place on lap 26. Luckily another caution came out seven laps later and the team had prepared a new nose for the car to cover the damaged one and help the aerodynamics. They pitted two more times to replace the nose.

Mark's lap times improved with the new nose on the car, but the car was too tight. Finally the teams were able to race under green for about 30 laps and Mark had worked his way up to 10th since many of the leaders had pitted for fuel. Jack Roush helped the team achieve excellent fuel mileage and they could go much farther on fuel than many teams. Just as Mark was about to pit for fuel, a caution came out for debris on the track. The Viagra® team was able to pit under caution and take wedge out of the car to free it up. That caution also put many drivers who had already pitted a lap down.

Mark was 24th when the race resumed on lap 80. The adjustments made the car a bit too loose and he told the team to put some of the wedge back in the car during the next stop. As the race progressed the leaders pitted several laps before Mark and he was as high as fourth place before he pitted on lap 119. That should have been his final stop of the day since the team could run the final 41 laps without stopping for fuel. Less than 10 laps later, Mark lost a lap to the leader, Steve Park. The team was not concerned because they knew Park would have to pit for fuel one final time and they would regain their lap then.

On lap 132 the caution came out for debris on the track again. The caution was good and bad for Mark. It was good because Park allowed him to get his lap back, but it was bad because now everyone would pit and everyone could make it to the end of the race. The team no longer had an advantage over much of the field. Mark gained one position in the pits with a 14.89-second stop and was in 21st place when the race resumed with 25 laps to go.

He had climbed up to 19th with only 17 laps to go, but was not as happy with the set of tires on the car as the previous set. Martin finished the race in 22nd place, and fell one position in the Winston Cup point standings to 12th place. He now trails 10th place by 96 points.

"That is what happens when you start in the middle of the pack," Mark said. "You get caught up in something that is not your fault. The Viagra® team did a great job of repairing the car as much as they could. We finished on the lead lap and didn't lose too much in the points. We almost got a top-10 finish if the race would have stayed green. A bunch of those guys up front would have had to pit again and we could have stayed out until the end. We did the best with what we had and we'll be tough next week at Watkins Glen."

"We worked on our fuel mileage that we could have avoided a stop that virtually the whole rest of the field would have had to make," Jack Roush said. "Mark would have been in the top-10 with his wrecked car if the race would have gone without a caution at the end. We got a flicker of what might have been and we saw it pass when that caution came out."

This weekend the Winston Cup series heads to the second road course of the season, Watkins Glen, N.Y.